- [Speaker] Coming up on this week's "A Lively Experiment."

The House says no to proposed raises for Governor McKee's cabinet.

And an interview with those on the front lines here in Rhode Island of federal cuts to research funding.

- [Announcer] "A Lively Experiment" is generously underwritten by, - Hi, I'm John Hazen White, Jr. For over 30 years, "A Lively Experiment" has provided insight and analysis of the political issues that face Rhode Islanders.

I'm a proud supporter of this great program and Rhode Island PBS.

- [Speaker] Joining us on the panel, Billy Hunt, former chairman of the Libertarian Party of Rhode Island.

Steph Machado, Boston Globe reporter, and contributor to Rhode Island PBS Weekly.

And former state representative Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung.

- Hello and welcome to this week's "Lively."

I'm Jim Hummel, and it's great to have you with us.

In a rare break with the governor, Speaker Joseph Shekarchi said, raises for 11 of the governor's cabinet members are inappropriate, given the dark clouds hovering over the state budget this year.

That resulted in a unanimous resolution in the House rejecting the increases.

But on Thursday, newly minted senate president Val Lawson said her chamber was not going to play ball, adding that the issue did not merit legislative intervention.

Billy, let me begin with you on this.

I see both sides of this.

I think the House was probably more of a symbolic thing.

I mean, $80,000 total is not a big deal.

But when you're looking for money, every dollar counts.

- It definitely does.

And whatever happened to meritocracy?

I mean, the state isn't exactly overperforming compared to its neighbors.

So when the governor goes ahead and compares the pay salary for commensurate employment status in other states, it kinda rings hollow, because they're actually doing much better job, therefore deserve the higher salary.

He also laments a lot about the March timing, that this is only able to be done at one time during the year.

And I mean, to me, that seems like a, not a bug, but a feature, because it's a good time during budget time to evaluate your cabinet level staff, and pay them accordingly based upon their outcome.

And instead of providing raises, we might be considered changing leadership, in my opinion.

So I think a lot of that should be considered besides just the, what is it, $10,000 an employee roughly, that we're talking about here, so... - Beyond wishing the little league good luck this year.

- Yes.

- When in the House, when you were there, did they ever vote unanimously on anything?

- Very, very, very few times.

And I think Speaker Shekarchi was trying to send a message and set a tone.

And he does this quite a bit.

And kudos to him and the House for putting out that message.

Like, we know tough budget times are ahead, they're here now, let's say, look, it's, we're gonna lead from the top.

And he sent that message.

It's also, take a look at the state right now, we have nurses out on strike now at Butler, we're taping on Friday.

It is very likely there will be a strike at Rhode Island Hospital, with the nurses there in the next few weeks.

So you're seeing people who are the teachers, who are the nurses, the working class Rhode Islander struggling to make any type of leeway when it comes to raising their salaries.

Some of these nurses didn't have any raises during the COVID times either.

So we're like, all right, the normal average person who's working like on a hamster wheel every single day, isn't getting those raises.

But you've got people like the head of DOT, head of different departments who, some people, it just don't feel like they're doing a great job either, and they're going ahead and getting the raises.

Again, it just sends a really difficult message to the working class Rhode Islander.

- Yeah, I think the same week that Speaker Shekarchi said, "Hey, we might need to come back in October for a special session because we don't know if there's gonna be Medicaid cuts coming down from Washington.

We don't know, maybe we're gonna have to raise taxes, or make some sort of painful cuts in the fall," to, in that same year, give cabinet secretaries an $8,00, $9,000 raise, certainly is a bad look, even if those individuals deserve it.

Totally separate from the merit question.

It doesn't seem in the House's view like it's the right year for it.

- I thought it was also interesting.

Val Lawson is like, this is her first major thing that, look, we don't think this rises to the level, maybe it's a message that the Senate is still relevant in this case, right?

- Yeah, and I think the, if I'm understanding correctly, typically the House and Senate don't reprove or reject these raises.

- [Jim] Right.

- And so it would've been a big step for them to proactively say, "We're gonna reject the raises."

So they're basically just taking no action, which means the raises go into effect.

- It's almost like a pocket veto.

So the revenue estimating conference, again, when you were in the House, - Yes.

- You wait for those numbers to come in, and then that ultimately determines how the governor's budget's gonna go through the sausage maker.

$80 million certainly helps, but it's still structural deficit.

So what do they do?

- So one of the big things is that if I'm Speaker Shekarchi right now, everybody's like, "Oh, you have $80 million more."

And sometimes those misleading headlines, then a lot of the different special interest group, different people who want their special projects funded, are coming like, "You got more money than you thought."

So I, no more of this holding back.

But there are blinking red lights everywhere.

I mean, they're flashing.

There's, you look down, there's five traffic lights blinking right in front of you.

We know the one thing that was really difficult and we're looking at the revenue estimating conference, you actually saw a big drop in the sales tax, which means you're looking at your small businesses probably underperforming what you thought.

And we're thinking, "All right, are we heading towards more recessionary times?"

- [Jim] People know about the economy?

- You see that.

And you're like, "All right, so we have to plan ahead."

You don't wanna start something you can't fund next year.

That just adds to more disappointment.

Next year's an election year.

If you're gonna set up for disappointment, do it now, and then try to be the hero next year.

Especially with Speaker Shekarchi thinking about running for governor, there might be some political games here.

- I question if it's actually a surplus to begin with.

I mean, there's a note in the report itself that says that most of it, I think around 67 million, is delayed state income tax refund.

So they collected the personal income taxes and now haven't actually returned it.

And that has been actually triggered by an increase in review activity, which presumably is related to the Rhode Island Bridges' data breach.

So I mean, this isn't really something that you can say, this is actually accounts payable that the state's gonna actually owe to taxpayers.

And when you actually remove that money from the surplus, it's really not as rosy of a picture.

And when you actually look at the corporate taxes, they actually underperform.

So a lot of economists in Rhode Island say that we're heading into a recession.

And I think this might just be a false indicator, in my opinion.

- There's also a couple of things that aren't accounted for in those revenue estimates.

For example, the governor said he was gonna close, proposed to close the minimum security prison in order to save money.

It turns out that would cost more money than it would save.

So they're not gonna do that.

He proposed a new tax on media that it doesn't seem like is going to come to fruition.

And so the budget is almost starting in a position of being unbalanced just based on the fact that some of those ideas aren't gonna happen.

- [Barbara] Yeah.

- Even separately from the revenue estimates.

- [Jim] Well, and truck tolls and those things and that, - That didn't turn back on.

- Because they know, but they wrote some revenue into that for the new year.

And that's always kind of the way it is.

I mean, I look at some of the things coming down the pike.

Representative John Lombardi, one of your former, - [Barbara] One of my dear friends, I do love John, but, yeah... - John, outta left field, proposes a boat tax, right?

And he says, and I heard him on an interview, "I don't know a boat from a motorcycle."

Well that does not inspire confidence.

- No.

- I mean, is this really, so now we're looking for revenue, rather than looking at the spending side.

I know where the libertarians stand on that.

- Well you know that libertarians thinks taxation is theft and this is actually a tax on boat owners.

Unlike the car tax that we had, there isn't an exemption for, or proposed exemption for lower valued vehicles, boats, or older boats or anything like that.

And if you think about boats in general, they are paying gas tax, and not getting the services of the roads and bridges.

They are paying a lot in marine services, mooring fees, marina fees.

And a lot of that is actually contributing to the welfare of all Rhode Islanders in terms of access and facilities that surround our beaches.

And fishing licenses and stuff like that fund a lot of the state police and the, I mean, the environmental police and the Harbor Masters and everything like that.

So it's definitely something that you start discriminating against boat owners and discouraging boat ownership is going to affect a lot of other externalities that we need to be conscious of in voting that legislation.

- But what also drives me nuts is when reps or senators say, "Well, I'm putting this out there to float the idea."

- I know.

- It's kinda like the cart's leading the horse.

It's like, wouldn't you do all of your economic study and all the things that you just talked about and then propose the legislation?

And how many times do we see that?

- Oh, oh.

- Just floating the idea, and if there's backlash, we won't go forward with it.

- Or they're just trying to set it up for something else.

If they'll put out maybe two steps beyond what they wanted to do, and see if we can get just like step one through and everything.

And that happens a lot too.

And some parts of the state are like, "Well, I gotta find my special project.

I don't care about the boating industry."

And Rhode Island's one of the only states in the entire country that doesn't tax yachts that actually helped to contribute in the Bristol and Newport area about really growing the boating industry.

So again, sometimes it's just very shortsighted.

And that would happen a lot of them.

- The bottle bill is back again this year.

I'm not holding my breath forward.

It seems to get more traction, but again, the lobbyists come out at the end of the session, and we've seen this how many times, Steph, where things just get lost?

- Yeah.

- Because you're concentrating on the budget and all these other things that it's, oh we'll get to that next year.

- Yeah, there's so many things that just come up every year, every year, every year.

And it's the same stories being written every year, every year, every year.

So we'll see if it happens.

There's this crunch at the end of the session, where dozens and dozens of bills get passed.

Obviously you were there when you were a state rep, until two, three in the morning, and then we're all sitting there unraveling what ended up coming through.

So there's a lot of things like that.

Obviously the assault weapons ban, I mean, there's a number of bills that come up every year that we just have to see if they're actually gonna end up, this is the year for them.

- And it's not the bottle bills here.

No.

And we set aside so much money for Rhode Island Resource Recovery to upgrade their equipment and their machines.

That's where they should start.

When we're talking about we're not recycling enough, well you can't even recycle nips, 'cause the machines can't possibly do it.

We set aside a ton of money, fix that first, let's get that going.

The bottle bill is, I just don't see it happening under this current leadership.

There just doesn't seem to be appetite.

- Well, and there's competing bills.

Some would have, who's gonna process it, and then if you have to figure all that out, that's gonna get lost in the crowd.

- It's a lot of infrastructure.

And you're trying to build, and to get, what's your purpose?

- [Jim] Who's gonna oversee that?

- And that's a lot of it too, because it puts a lot of onus right now on business owners.

And they're like, "We don't want that right now."

So they're pushing back.

But in reality, let's do step one, and fix the Resource Recovery with the money we set aside to do that, and then go from there.

- What else are you looking at down the stretch in the assembly?

- The assault weapons bill is definitely something that we're hearing a lot of.

It's interesting, the House had their bill, and the Senate just had their hearing last Wednesday.

- Marathon.

- What I, the thing that struck me the most about it was the overwhelming support and opposition of this bill in testimony, and people that showed up at the State House to vote against this, to say that they disapprove of this, and how it's just being completely ignored by all of our state elected officials.

This is not how a democracy is supposed to work.

There's not a super majority that's up there that's allowed to just ignore the will of the electorate, and just push through whatever legislation meets the needs of their special interest.

And so you can go ahead and dismiss the merits of the assault weapons bill and what you think people should be able to have.

But just the fact that democracy is supposed to work where the elected officials supposed to listen to the electorate, that's not happening at the State House right now.

And if this was any other issue, if this was an abortion issue or something like that, that was a hot button issue, this would not be acceptable.

- See, I'll push back on that.

Because you take a look, and this will all come down to what deals were cut to make Val Lawson Senate president, and Frank Ciccone.

I mean, Frank Ciccone, who's the number two in the Senate right now, has his FFL, his Federal Firearms License.

So he's very much ingrained in this two-way community.

We gotta see which deals were cut.

And I wouldn't be so shocked if they can't get this out of Senate judiciary, which a lot of people in the two-way committee think that, all right, great, we blocked it in the Senate in that committee.

Don't be surprised if they did something.

- They'd do any round to get it through.

- What they did with the abortion bill at 19 and send it through another committee.

- Yeah.

- Well it's, if it's 50/50 on Senate judiciary, which is what the conventional wisdom indicates right now, then the question is, do the three Democratic leaders and the two Republican leaders - [Jim] Go to the committee.

- Come in and vote ex officio?

So then it kind of comes down to how is Ciccone gonna vote.

- [Barbara] Yeah.

- 'Cause he's the gun guy.

He could do what we saw the late Senate President Ruggiero do, where he voted yes on the abortion matter in committee to get it to the floor, but then voted no on the floor, because he personally opposed it.

He wanted to let the full Senate have a vote.

That I guess would be the most democratic thing is to not let one committee make the decision, but let the full Senate make the decision.

- And for years, that's always been the Speaker or the Senate president said, "Don't let it outta committee."

And Senator DiPalma said he thinks if it gets to the floor, - He does, yep.

- He thinks that he has the votes.

Steph, let me just stay with you.

We had some late breaking news late in the week.

You covered, we talked a lot about the data breach.

All right, Bridges, how long has that been?

And you covered now, kind of the after action report yesterday.

Had some interesting stuff that we didn't know.

- Yeah, so a couple things that were interesting.

First of all that the hack happened last July, so we all found out about it in December.

So it happened a lot sooner, and went undetected for months and months until Deloitte found out about it because Brain Cipher, the hacker, posted about it online.

Two, - [Jim] That's a great name for a band, isn't it?

Brain Cipher?

- That Brain Cipher used the username and password of a Deloitte employee to get in, so, yeah, - Even with the multi authentication, they figured it out?

- And they said that they can't figure out how they got past the multifactor authentication.

This was, by the way, the external report was done by CrowdStrike.

And then CrowdStrike also found, or I guess the state also found when reviewing the data with CrowdStrike that an additional 100,000 people were victims of this, who had not previously gotten letters.

And some of the people who got letters, it turns out were not victims.

So the total number of people affected ends up being the same.

But there's 100,000 new victims who never applied for benefits under RIBridges.

Their data basically went through RIBridges as a passthrough, because when you get hired at a job, there's an employee check that happens.

And so their data ended up in RIBridges again as a passthrough, but you wouldn't know if, - [Jim] Lucky them.

- If you're that person, you wouldn't, if you've never applied for benefits, you wouldn't know that you were in RIBridges.

So they're now going to get letters sometime after Memorial Day.

So people will find out if they are part of this.

- I think the bigger story here, I mean obviously the breach a big deal, but is the fact that the state is solely relying on third-party liability to fund this whole entire enterprise of notifying people, doing the forensics, and everything like that.

There is a concept of insurance that is surprising that Deloitte paid out $5 million, when it's shown that it was their negligence that caused the breach.

The state does not have any first-party cyber liability insurance that they could have had that could have helped defray some of these costs to the taxpayer, ultimately, who's going to have to pay for the mistakes and the incompetence of the administration and the people that they hired, basically.

So that's a very important piece that I don't think is getting enough coverage.

- And they keep Deloitte, but it's kind of hard.

I mean, they're so entrenched right now.

That was the question when Governor McKee renewed, - It wasn't even governor.

And this goes back to Governor Raimondo, yeah, I mean, this goes, - He renewed the contract.

- Sure!

- And it's like, how do we do it?

It seemed too big to fail.

Well, they failed.

- And I asked him if he was gonna fire Deloitte, and he said, "Well, we're gonna go out to RFP, maybe for a new vendor, but that's gonna take two years."

- Yeah.

- So they're still gonna be in charge.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt if you had a thought.

- No, no, but no, and that's exactly it too.

At some point you have to hold somebody accountable, all right?

And that's where we all are, and that's what we want.

We wanna see more accountability on that side.

And it's very frustrating.

This has been going on for a decade, at this point.

- Let me stay with you.

Healthcare.

- Yes.

- Which is not only your passion in legislature, but it's your day job.

- It's my full-time job.

- It's your day job.

- It's my day off today!

So I'm coming in.

- Yeah, so I appreciate you coming on in on your day off.

Your first program many weeks ago, everything was just breaking with Anchor Medical.

- [Barbara] Yeah.

- I'm not sure whether there's gonna be anything down the stretch in the legislature to help at least shore up primary care.

That seems to be the primary focus right now.

- So I think what Speaker Shekarchi was saying, do we have to come back in the fall and whatnot, we're sitting here taping Friday morning, the budget's trying to go through in D.C. right now, there's a lot of consternation in the House.

The two things you wanna look for in this budget coming out federally is when we're talking about Medicaid, are they gonna mess with the 1115 waiver, which is a very wonky thing.

But we have a very, we have a lot of innovation in Rhode Island Medicaid.

We're able to pay for things that aren't strictly healthcare because they actually go towards the social determinants of health.

If that starts getting locked down, we're gonna have to really change our tune and that will require them coming back in the fall to adjust.

The other thing too, there was a bill put in by the Hospital Association of Rhode Island to work on these provider taxes.

It's a very wonky thing.

They get a couple extra dollars in federal reimbursement, but times millions of transactions a year.

This was upwards of 70, $80 million.

And right now they're saying we're gonna cap that.

We were very afraid that they were gonna eliminate that altogether.

And so these are certain things that when we're looking, New York Times had a bit article about it.

There's a lot of potential issues.

I know when you're talking to people in the House, they're very concerned that even if we don't get true Medicaid cuts, do they start tying things to immigration policy?

There's always been worries about that.

Now that Rhode Island has driver's licenses for people here illegally, does that make us technically a sanctuary state?

And how are they gonna define that?

So there's gonna be a lot of tweaking going on, and we've gotta raise the Medicaid rates.

But unfortunately right now, we're almost afraid that we're gonna lose even more of it.

- We're trying to fix things that have been decades in the making.

A quick fix.

And there's not, there isn't one.

- No, there is no quick fix.

I mean, I've got two young children, I'm dealing with pediatricians and finding them.

My primary care physician retired recently.

And luckily I was able to find, well ultimately, became a nurse practitioner, which was fine for me.

I'm young, I'm healthy, it's not an issue.

But for a lot of the people that are being affected by the recent shutdowns, they do have serious medical issues that need referrals and specialists and everything like that.

And just practically, medical offices are small businesses.

I mean, basically.

So I mean, the fact that we have a hostile business climate in Rhode Island doesn't surprise anybody that medical offices are also suffering.

And they just have the double whammy that we happen to have low reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid, which is where a big source of their revenue's coming from.

So, I mean, I think there's a big systemic problem, like you said, that needs to be addressed.

And it's not gonna be a quick fix by putting in more administrative than what would they want providers to provide quarterly updates to the state and everything like that.

More bureaucracy and more red tape is not... - Wait until you get to be my age.

High maintenance.

- Yeah, exactly.

- I gotta need a lot of healthcare.

- But you have a really good point too.

How much of the state, I mean, one out of every three Rhode Islanders is on Medicaid.

- [Billy] Yep.

- Okay, and 70% are either on Medicare, the elderly, or Medicaid.

That's a lot when we're talking about low reimbursement rates.

- Speaking of looking at what's going on in Washington, Steph had a great piece on Rhode Island PBS Weekly, also in the Boston Globe, about the research budgets being slashed.

And of course that's hitting home in every community.

She talked to Dr. Amy Nunn, who is with the Rhode Island Public Health Institute.

Here's a little bit of her interview from the Weekly story.

- As a scientist, we feel that, I feel that the field is under attack.

And it's not just my issues.

There are a lot of other hot button issues that are under a saw.

And that makes me scared, makes me scared about all of the knowledge and progress.

It's ultimately scientific progress that will be lost on these really important issues.

And the reason that they've been so heavily funded is because, not because of the DEI word salad that you're hearing about on the news.

It's because they are studying the health problems of people who account for the largest disease burden.

So this isn't just DEI, this is about saving the lives of people who are the sickest or who are the most likely to get sick.

And now we're eradicating our commitments to those vulnerable people.

And we have a moral issue with that.

- And if you wanna see Steph's full story, you can see it at ripbs.org/weekly.

This really brought it home.

And we've always talked in TV about putting a face on the story.

She and the other doctor you talked to, interesting stuff.

- Yeah, and the research that Dr. Nunn was doing was to try and prevent the spread of HIV.

And she'd been working on it for years.

It had full approval from the National Institutes of Health, and then it was terminated under a sweeping cut to HIV research.

It wasn't because there was something wrong with her particular study, but the argument from the Trump administration was that it was DEI, and they said, "DEI harms the health of Americans."

They've said that in letter after letter after letter, canceling scientific research.

And that is a concern to Dr. Nunn and to other doctors.

They say it takes a really long time to get research going, to do a trial, to get it approved.

And she said at one point in the piece, she thinks it's gonna take a generation to recover from the cuts to scientific research.

- This is the federal issue though, of trying to fix something that's been decades in the making because there is some wasteful, shock, right?

There is some wasteful federal spending, probably some things that maybe should be eliminated, but you have to go through a deliberative process to do that.

- Yeah, I mean, I agree to an extent.

I'm not gonna argue that it's very hard to shut off the spigot all in one go.

But, as a token libertarian on the panel, I mean... - [Jim] Did you bring your chainsaw with you today or not?

- I mean, it's just federal funding.

It propagandize science.

I mean, you can talk about any hot button issue you want to, but we can point to something as simple as the food pyramid and how much of a disaster that was, and focus by special interest, donating money, and it basically contributed to the obesity crisis in America.

And it just, the intent is very good on a lot of these programs.

But again, it distorts investments and it distorts research and pushes everything towards whatever the state sponsored propaganda, whoever's in charge at that time.

So I think in general, government should not be funding any science, so.. - Any science at all?

- Any, I don't, it should be left up to the free market if it's worth the value of what the science is, they should be able to get funding for it, and capitalize on their investment.

I mean, that's just the way the market works.

And when you add government grants and subsidies to that, you're just reducing the innovation and narrowing the scope of the science and limiting what you can actually study.

This is what happened when they thought the Earth was flat because of the dogma of what the leaders were saying at that time.

It's the same thing happening over and over again.

- Well, that's an interesting point of view.

I wanna commend you, Steph, that was a wonderful report.

If you have 11 minutes, I would definitely go and watch that later this week.

- Thank you.

- But later on in that report, you had Dr. Turco from Rhode Island Biomed.

And he said, some of this had to happen.

To your point, that some of the federal stuff, and we're talking about waste.

There were two different studies being funded in Rhode Island, and I'm sure they'll find me, and tell me this was really important.

But making antiretroviral therapy, completely free, work for sexual and gender minority youth in Brazil, okay?

And then there was a study on integrated alcohol and sexual assault prevention only for bisexual women.

We can argue when there's a $30 trillion deficit, some of these things need to be put on the sidelines.

And I think that's where we're like, if you take a look in to Dr. Nunn's point, and here, back in 2019, Trump was like, "Let's go and eradicate HIV," okay?

And it's almost like when you look at the way this administration operates, I'm sorry, I disagree with the whole funding.

I think we do absolutely need some funding and science here.

Now can we say, can we all rally together and be like, let's do the cancer shot.

You know what I mean?

Like, let's try to eradicate this.

Sometimes that seems to work with this administration and focus better.

Fighting it does not.

So I don't think that's gonna be successful.

- Just last 30 seconds on this.

So these studies are ended.

They have any hope that they're gonna get the money back?

Or that ship is sailed?

- Oh, they're all appealing.

But no, there's not really, I mean, Dr. Turco said maybe we can get more, and he's the head of the new Rhode Island Life Science Hub, said maybe we can get private funding, philanthropic funding, maybe... - [Jim] Billy's all for that.

- But when you think about how many scientific grants have been canceled now across the country, they are now competing for whatever philanthropic money is out there.

And, - [Jim] It's good market.

- We'll see what happens.

But the reason that the federal government funds these things is because they are experimental, and a private entity might not wanna do it if they're not gonna get a return on their investment.

- Okay.

To be continued on that discussion.

We're gonna have a healthy after party with "Lively" out in the hall, I can feel it.

Let's do outrageous and/or kudos.

Billy, let's begin with you this week.

- It was on the topic list, but it is apropos RIPTA is paying the stadium to advertise for them.

I live, I mean, I apologize, I work right near the stadium in Pawtucket.

- [Jim] In Pawtucket, yep.

- The only advertising I've seen is RIPTA advertising the stadium, reverse.

So I'm not really sure if RIPTA is broke, and can't afford to fund themselves, or how they can afford to advertise and support a private entity like the soccer stadium.

It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

- They're offering free rides.

- Yes.

- Free buses on game days.

- Yeah, they're actually paying for advertising?

I thought they were just... - I think it's a trade.

It's a trade.

- It's a trade.

- We know about that in television.

It's a trade, right?

So I think they're offering free buses and then there's gonna be some type of advertising, I think, in the stadium.

- I guess RIPTA advertised at the stadium.

- There is.

We were there last week.

It's all over the stadium and video boards and whatnot, so, - Outrage?

Kudo?

- Outrage.

Well it's first off, for me and the other 1.4 billion Catholics in this world, it's been a very eventful month.

And we're very excited of course, coming up the installation of Bishop Bruce.

And I almost feel like this should have been your outrage, but one of the funny things that's kind of just only in America.

So now that we have the first American pope, or the embodiment of the higher power, he also has to answer to another higher power, which is the IRS.

So in the Washington Post and Fortune magazine said that there is no blanket exception for religious clergy, and he could be stuck with an over six figure tax bill.

So first Congress person to make that little loophole goes straight to heaven, is my guess.

Just a little... - Never renounce your tax obligation to the federal government.

- Tax is a criminal.

- You get the last minute.

- Okay, this is not something that was new this week, but has continued to irk me week after week, is the continued decision by the large social media companies to suppress all links, - [Barbara] Yes.

- To news in posts.

And it's not because I'm vain and I want everyone to see my stories.

But every time I see some misinformation go viral, and then a post with a news story in it gets zero retweets or likes.

- [Jim] It's frustrating.

- It is making the public less informed.

- Dumb and dumber, right?

That is too bad, yeah.

We will end on that note.

But you come here for all your knowledge.

You come to "Lively" for the real scoop every week.

- [Steph] Exactly!

Skip social media, straight to PBS.

- Yes.

- Folks, we appreciate you joining us this week.

Steph, good to see you back.

And Billy and Barbara Ann, good to have you.

- [Barbara] Pleasure.

- We are heading into the heart of the legislative session.

Do not miss a minute every, by this time next week, we don't know what will happen, but we will have it covered here.

We hope you have a great weekend, and join us back here next week, as "A Lively Experiment" continues.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] "A Lively Experiment" is generously underwritten by, - Hi, I'm John Hazen White Jr. For over 30 years, "A Lively Experiment" has provided insight and analysis of the political issues that face Rhode Islanders.

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